Pretty In Pink: Local off road racer looks to add to his legacy

Todd White has become an Ionia County Fair off road racing legend, and the custom paint job he gets for his car just adds to that legacy.

Don VanderVeendon.vanderveen@sentinel-standard.com

Todd White has become an Ionia County Fair off road racing legend, and the custom paint job he gets for his car just adds to that legacy.The 33-year-old White, who has won eight of the past 10 Free Fair feature events, drives a pink 2002 Pontiac Grand Am sporting a custom paint job courtesy five daughters between the ages of 2 and 8.White will be behind the wheel of the same beat up Grand Am that he drove to victory in last year’s Free Fair off road event. He has won eight of the past 10 Free Fair feature races.“The car is still pretty, and I’ve had a pretty good track record with it,” White said. “I fix it, and then my daughters have to paint it. I always race a pink car. When you have a wife, a cat and five girls at home, you have to drive a pink car.“They go in the pits and sit still on stage for two or three hours and enjoy every minute of it. They like to watch me race.”The “Pink Panther” isn’t really all that pretty, but it is fast and has the battle scars to prove it. White hopes to drive his car to victory lane for the eighth time in 11 years at Sunday’s Bump and Run Off Road Race at the Ionia Free Fair Grand Stand.Sunday’s Off Road Race is run in conjunction with the Free Fair’s annual Demolition Derby, which is scheduled to start in front of the Grandstand shortly after the feature race. The racing begins at 6 p.m.“I like the off road racing, because it’s a lot of fun and I’ve had a lot of success with it,” White said. “When you finish with the off road race, you repair your car and move on to the next week.“With the demolition derby, it’s likely one night of fun and then you have to throw the car away.”White said he also plans to run in the demolition derby if he can find an old Ford Crown Victoria police car to smash up.“They are good for something,” White said with a chuckle. “They’re a whole lot more fun to drive than to be sitting in the back seat.”Despite all of his off road racing success, White said he has never won a demolition derby event.“My success in the demolition derby is very minimal,” he said. “That is more about who builds the hardest car, not the fastest.“I can build the fastest. I like to go fast and hit hard. Off road racing and the derby are not in a comparable realm. One is about beating each other to the death until there is only one left.“I’d rather take out 10 cars and have all 10 cars run the track, and win the race and then drive the car back onto the trailer. In the demolition derby, you have to load it back in and your head aches and back aches the next morning. I never broke a bone, but I’ve had a lot of aches and pains.”The demolition derby originally drew Todd White into off the road racing realm.“I started when I was 16,” he said. “My dad did it his whole life as sort of a hobby at the local fair, and me and my brother, Scott, sort of followed,” Todd White said. “I blame that on my dad, but there are probably worse things I could be doing.“The derby nowadays is more of a side sport, because of the cost of scrap metal and everything. You have to put so much into it to be competitive. Off road racing, on the other hand, is a great poor man’s sport, because you don’t have to keep building new cars.”White estimates that he has won more than 200 races over the 17 years he’s been competing.“I hope to be competitive again on Sunday,” he said. “The cleaner you drive, the better your chances. A lot of people might laugh when they hear me say that, because I normally get a little violent on the track.“I do it for fun more than anything. If you’re not having fun doing it, you’re wasting your time.”White recently donated 122 of his first-place trophies to the Special Olympics. He has kept all of the hardware he’s won at Ionia Free Fair races.“I only keep the first-place trophies,” he said. “Like the saying goes, if you’re not first, you’re last.“For me, it’s more about bragging rights.”